Marie Collins: ¨"...They truly believed it only happened in certain countries. What I can say so far is you can't make concrete promises. But as a survivor myself, I am hopeful that we are going to achieve what is hoped for. ¨

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Roman Catholic Church failed to recognize the worldwide reach of clerical sexual abuse, Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley said Saturday (May 3) at a press conference.

"Many don't see it as a problem of the universal church," said O'Malley who heads the Vatican's new commission for the protection of minors.

"In many people's minds it is an American problem, an Irish problem or a German problem," he said. "The church has to face it is everywhere in the world. There is so much denial. The church has to respond to make the church safe for children."

O'Malley, whose Boston archdiocese was at the center of a wave of sex scandals that rocked the church a decade ago, addressed the media after the panel's eight members held its first meeting in Rome.

Pope Francis announced the creation of the new committee in March. It includes Irish abuse victim and campaigner Marie Collins and two psychiatrists. But the committee is expected to expand to represent every continent around the world.

"We wish to express our heartfelt solidarity with all victims/survivors of sexual abuse as children and vulnerable adults," O'Malley read from a prepared statement.

"We will propose initiatives to encourage local responsibility around the world and the mutual sharing of 'best practices' for the protection of all minors, including programs for training, education, formation and responses to abuse."

Collins, who was sexually abused by a priest at age 13, said she, too, had been "shocked" by the denial she had witnessed among some Catholic bishops about the extent of clerical sexual abuse.

"...They truly believed it only happened in certain countries," she said.

The committee met as the Vatican is about to face fresh scrutiny from a United Nations panel on torture in Geneva this week.

In February, a U.N. committee on the rights of the child denounced the Vatican for adopting policies that allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children and called for known and suspected abusers to be immediately removed.

Francis strongly rejected the report's findings, saying that no other organization had done more to fight pedophilia and the church had acted with "transparency and responsibility."

The pope recently said he took personal responsibility for the "evil" of clerical sex abuse, sought forgiveness from victims and said the church must do more to protect children.

Collins said that while she had "difficulty" with the pope's claims that the church had done more than any other institution to act on abuse, she said she believed the church was moving forward, but stressed that the effort was still in its "early days."Francis announced the creation of the commission last December and named its members in March after coming under initial criticism for having ignored the sex abuse issue. The commission's eight members -- four of whom are women -- met for the first time this week at the pope's Vatican hotel to discuss the scope of their work and future members.

Briefing reporters Saturday, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, said current church laws could hold bishops accountable if they fail to do their jobs to protect children. But he said those laws hadn't been sufficient to date and new protocols were needed.

"Obviously our concern is to make sure that there are clear and effective protocols to deal with the situations where superiors of the church have not fulfilled their obligations to protect children," O'Malley said. That could include an effort toward creating an "open process" that "would hold people accountable for their responsibility to protect children."

Victims groups have long cited the case of O'Malley's predecessor in Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as archbishop after the sex abuse scandal exploded publicly there in 2002. But Pope John Paul II then appointed Law to the plum assignment as archpriest of one of the Vatican's four major basilicas in Rome. Even today, another U.S. bishop remains in office despite having been convicted of misdemeanor failure to report suspected child abuse.

Francis' new advisory board said in a concluding statement that church accountability is "especially important" to the members and that in their founding statutes they would emphasize the "devastating consequences" for victims when suspected abuse is not reported.

Marie Collins, a committee member and Irish survivor of sexual abuse, said she came away from the inaugural meeting of the commission "hopeful" primarily because the issue of accountability was addressed straight on.

"I know there are many survivors around the world who are hoping, and have great expectations of this commission," Collins said. "And what I can say so far is you can't make concrete promises. But as a survivor myself, I am hopeful that we are going to achieve what is hoped for. It's very, very important."

O'Malley said another area that the commission would address is giving advice to national bishops' conferences to improve their own guidelines for handling abuse cases. Recently, the Italian bishops' conference released their guidelines and said they had no legal obligation to report suspected abuse to police.

The commission met on the eve of a U.N. committee meeting in Geneva in which the Vatican is expected to come under a second round of criticism for its handling of abuse. A U.N. committee monitoring implementation of a key treaty on children's rights blasted the Holy See earlier this year, accusing it of systematically placing its own interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through its own policies and code of silence.

It recommended the Vatican immediately remove any priest suspected or known to have abused children, open its archives on abusers and the bishops who covered up for them, and turn the cases over to law enforcement.

BBC

Christian Catholicism: Pope Francis, Let’s Not Neglect Children at the Next Synod

Views of Jerry Slevin, a Harvard and Catholic "schooled" retired international lawyer ______

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The Family Synod’s 190 celibate bishops, and the international media echo chamber generally, paid little attention recently to the need to reverse the Vatican’s failed “doctrines” and “rules” regarding the welfare and safety of children. Indeed, some of Pope Francis’ lawyers,  lobbyists and large donors, especially in the USA, are likely broadly smiling now.

Hopefully, the protection of children and the endorsement of artificial contraception by the Vatican will be center stage at the October 2015 Final Family Synod.

For two weeks, with barely another two weeks now to go before crucial US Senate elections on November 4, Francis’ media machine, with some help from Cardinals Dolan, Burke and some others from Africa, have managed to keep gay marriage and divorced Catholics issues front and center. Since the anti-gay voters in some US states could be the difference in some close Senate elections, getting these voters fired up and motivated to vote is quite important for the Vatican and its right wing billionaire buddies.

That many gay Catholics are unjustly and seriously harmed and hurt by these political games seems irrelevant to the Vatican and the US bishops, notwithstanding the large number of these clerics who are reportedly gay. See, for example

At the same time, the Vatican media spinners have seemingly endeavored with some success to keep the anti-contraception crusade and the priest child abuse scandal out of the press for a couple of weeks.

Media attention about these last two issues tend to bring out voters who are unattractive to the Vatican’s “low regulation/lower taxes” billionaire buddies.

The Vatican was able during the Synod in a very low keyed manner to reinforce its anti-artificial birth control “doctrine” and to beatify the “doctrine’s” main modern proponent, Pope Paul VI. Incidentally, Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, hardly the most “prophetic” supporter of Pope Francis, was welcomed by Francis in Rome for Paul VI’s beatification, as is evident in the picture and report  here.

Presumably, in the next two weeks before the elections, the advocates for Obamacare’s contraception insurance mandate will now respond effectively and forcefully to preserve affordable access to contraception, especially for poorer US couples.

As an example, and a very significant one, of Francis’ strategy, the reported vote in the Synod Final Report was 167 votes in approval to 9 opposed.or almost 95% in favor, of paragraph 58 relating to contraception and Humanae Vitae. The Synod bishops indicated, in pertinent part, that  in this area it is necessary to give “… the reason for the beauty and truth of the unconditional openness to life …” and the need ” … to rediscover the message of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae …” . “

“{U}nconditional openness to life” = “No artificial contraception”, no?

It appears that in almost a half century, since Paul VI’s profoundly mistaken and harmful encyclical, the celibate Catholic hierarchy have learned almost nothing from Catholic couples about responsible family planning. So much for “infallibility” and “graduality”, it appears.

Approximately 95% of Catholic couples reportedly use artificial contraception in good conscience; yet, it appears that nearly 95% of celibate bishops think these couples are committing a mortal sin. Hello?

Of course, the couples, unlike Pope Francis and 95% of his bishops, are not desperately trying to preserve papal infallibility as the cornerstone of the current corrupt Vatican top down structure. If the Pill is moral, then two popes, Pius XI and Paul VI, were dead wrong, and popes are “fallible” like every other human being!

And of course, popes are fallible, and Francis and his bishops must know this, especially after this Synod fiasco with the pope and bishops all over the place theologically, depending on the day of the week and the changing factional alignments. As John Allen reported (10/20): “I don’t think he {Pope Francis} is much of a strategist,” one cardinal told Crux Sunday night. “I used to think there was a plan underneath the chaos … now I’m wondering if the chaos is the plan.” No, John, this is just a “mess”, the Jesuit pope’s preferred word for “chaos”, but it is an “infallible mess”, no?

The Synod has. in effect, dealt a fatal blow to the whole modern “doctrine” of the Magisterium. The 2015 Synod will either administer the “last rites” to the concept of an infallible Magisterium, or the Vatican Titanic will thereafter sink even faster.

For a sense of the outrage of many Catholics on the Synod’s evasive approach to the contraception ban, please consider perusing some of the more than 400 hundred comments, mostly negative, submitted recently in just a few days to the recent  superb article at the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) by Yale educated Jamie Manson, entitled, “Why isn’t anyone talking about the synod’s paragraphs on contraception?” 

Jamie Manson perceptively noted: “The synodal fathers seem insistent that natural family planning methods will remain the only form of contraception allowed to Catholic families and that all acts of sexual intimacy in marriage must be open to life. While in the U.S., many of us have the luxury of ignoring the church’s teaching on contraception, in many developing countries, the church’s position on birth control directly impacts the law of the land.”

“You would think we would understand this lesson after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops almost single-handedly widened conscience exemptions on the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. Apparently, it didn’t affect enough of us.”

“For the global poor, access to contraception can mean the difference between starvation and nourishment, poverty and stability, illness and health, death and life. Few issues are more crucial to the fate of poor families around the world.”

“It seems to be inherent in human nature: If an issue isn’t affecting us directly, it’s harder to become impassioned about it. Sometimes even the most well-meaning progressives can get caught up in their tight circle of concerns and cannot see beyond their own privilege. On the issue of contraception, that needs to change, especially as the Synod of Bishops on the family develops over the next two years. …”

Pope Francis in his Jesuit magazines’ interview last year noted:”We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible…  The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”

Likely facing pressure from worldwide media observers assembled at the Vatican to report on Family Synod issues, two weeks ago, Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s seemingly “do nothing advisory commission on minors” made its latest pitch at trying to appear serious. Now as “chief papal protector of children”, Boston’s O’Malley is supposedly addressing  the most important current Catholic family issue — clerical child sexual abuse, that the Family Synod obscenely ducked.

Hopefully, Pope Francis and his bishops will show more courage at next October’s Final Family Synod and adopt effective and transparent bishop accountability measures, if not before then. After all, it is almost three decades since the US Papal Nuncio’s canon lawyer, Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P., recommended to the US bishops and also to the Vatican that they get the priest sexual abuse of children scandal under control.

While the Family Synod was garnering most media attention recently, new child abuse scandal stories continued to appear.

In the Dominican Republic, the pressure is continuing to build to prosecute Polish Archbishop Wesolowski there. 

In Minneapolis, the wheels of criminal justice, which turn slowly there, did turn with the prospect of criminal prosecutions of priests, including one priest case that reportedly may involve Archbishop Nienstedt in some capacity. See:  http://www.startribune.com/local/east/279581672.html  and

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/10/17/clergy-abuse-cases

And former Minneapolis Archdiocesan official, Jennifer Haselberger, whose recent unprecedented  107-page affidavit was Archbishop Nienstedt’s worst nightmare come true, has continued to press to protect children there. She is also pressing both for Nienstedt’s removal, and for public disclosure of the confidential report about allegations of improper relationships that Niensted allegedly had with some seminarians and priests.. See her recent TV appearance, interview and reports here:

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/10/14/jennifer-haselberger/

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/10/14/whistleblower-says-archbishop-nienstedt-must-step-down/

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/10/05/former-church-official-wants-independent-review-of-files-on-abusive-priests

http://www.canonicalconsultation.com/1/post/2014/10/further-reflections-on-the-doe-1-settlement-four-thingsneededto-move-beyond-crisis.html

Predictably, Pope Francis’ advisory “abuse commission”, after almost a year (and over a year and a half of Francis’ papacy”),  has not yet even finalized completely its membership or operating rules or even set up a permanent office. Indeed, its lone abuse survivor member, Marie Collins recently indicated to AP that she had been frustrated with the slow pace of work on the commission.

AP’s forthright Rome reporter, Nicole Winfield, honestly observed recently that, while “Francis’ other expert commissions looking into Vatican finance and administration worked at a frenzied pace through 2014 and finished their projects in recent months, the sex abuse commission never seemed to get off the ground. It lacked organization, a clear mission statement, office space, funding and a full membership roster. …” Would that some other Vatican reporters had some of Winfield’s candor!

Winfield also noted that ” …O”Malley has pledged that the commission will develop “clear and effective protocols” to hold accountable bishops who covered up for abusive priests …”  O’Malley seems to have made similar pledges before with little to show for it, it appears.

For the full AP report, please see/(click)

As to Pope Francis’ new “papal protector of children”,  Cardinal Sean O’Malley, please see the recent detailed, and documented, information, from Anne Barrett Doyle, the excellent researcher at BishopAccountabillity.org, on Cardinal O’Malley’s poor history on child abuse prevention efforts, described in her “Six Ways Cardinal Sean O’Malley Has Mishandled the Abuse Crisis” at:

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/OMalley_Fact_Sheet.htm

To date, after a well publicized announcement almost a year ago, O’Malley has mainly had only a few photo ops with Pope Francis and some perfunctory meetings of his inchoate priest child abuse commission, usually timed to deflect negative publicity from UN committee condemnations of the Vatican’s priest child abuse cover-ups and the like.

It seems quite clear that Pope Francis is intentionally pursuing effective child protection reform measures very slowly and almost secretly with this new advisory committee (A) headed by Cardinal Law’s successor, Cardinal O’Malley, who is experienced with “handling” abuse investigations confidentially and slowly, and (B) assisted now, as top assistant, by Cardinals Law’s, O’Malley’s  and Mueller’s predictable and pliable longtime canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver.

For the current “big picture” on the Vatican’s continuing failures here, please see the recent report by Fr. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P., the world’s leading expert on curtailing priest child sexual abuse, at:

http://christiancatholicism.com/how-survivors-have-changed-history-by-thomas-p-doyle-o-p/

wordt vervolgd

If he doesn't scare you, no evil thing will...SNAP’s “Dirty Dozen” list – the “papabile” who would be the worst choice for children

The following twelve papal candidates are the ones that we are most worried about becoming the next pope. These twelve were chosen based exclusively on their actions and/or public comments about child sex abuse and cover up in the church. Sources include mainstream media accounts, legal filings and victims’ experiences. The names are in no particular order.

1) Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, Mexico
--He blamed the media for “attacks on the church,” alleging “over-reporting” of church sex cases.

 klik
--He claimed that there are no “documented” cases of abuse against minors in Mexico.
--He also repeatedly minimized and concealed multiple child sex abuse allegations against Fr. Nicholas Aguilar Rivera who traveled between his native Mexico and the Los Angeles archdiocese, molesting kids in both places. Aguilar Rivera’s current whereabouts are unknown.

2) Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, Honduras
--He said much of the U.S. media was anti-Catholic and that the major networks and newspapers "made themselves protagonists of what I do not hesitate to define as a persecution of the church."
klik
--He also opposes bishops turning allegations of clerical sexual abuse over to civil authorities for investigation and possible prosecution. "I would be willing to go to jail before harming one of my priests -- I am not a policeman," he said.
klik

3) Cardinal Timothy Dolan, New York
--In August of 2011, Dolan took minimal steps against Fr. Jamie Duenas, who repeatedly abused a teenage girl who worked for him and was arrested. Instead of helping the police or the victim, Dolan attacked the victim on his official website for going back to work after the first assault.   klik

--That same year, Dolan kept silent for nine months about the case of Brother Lawrence Gordon, an assistant principal who had child porn on his computer. Such delays and secrecy give predators ample time to potentially destroy evidence, intimidate victims, discredit witnesses, threaten whistleblowers, and fabricate alibis.

KLIK
--Internal church documents released by a judge last summer show that Dolan devised a secret plan to pay pedophile priests $20,000 each to quietly leave the ministry. Some of the clerics went elsewhere, but Dolan warned no one. At least 12 priests are known to have gotten payouts.
KLIK
--In 2007, Dolan publicly and vehemently denied paying off offender priests after it was discovered that one notorious priest child sex offender, Fr Franklyn Becker, was given money.
KLIK

4) Cardinal Angelo Scola, Italy
--In 2010, when Pope Benedict’s role in the sex abuse and cover up crisis was questioned in news accounts, Scola publicly called the coverage an “iniquitous humiliation.”
KLIK
--In a 2010 homily delivered at St. Peter’s Basilica, Scola refered to the clergy sex abuse crisis,   offered no apology to victims and shifted blame and minimized church wrongdoing by stressing that pedophilia “concerns different environments and different categories of persons” outside the church.
KLIK


5) Cardinal George Pell, Australia*
--He claims that church has been a victim of “smears” in the media about child abuse, there are no cover ups, and that it is untrue that the church officials are “inefficient” in handling child abuse cases.
KLIK
--He worked to secure a court file in which it allegedly states that Pell was present when a boy spoke up about being raped by a priest. Pell called the victim’s statements "irresponsible and untrue."
KLIK
--Pell does not believe that the royal commission investigating clergy sex crimes and cover ups needs to take place.
KLIK

 6) Cardinal Dominik Duka, Czech Republic

--He claimed that reporting about the abuse of kids in Irish schools was an attempt to “push the church from its position in the upbringing and education” of children. (It’s not clear why he feels he has expertise in clergy sex abuse and cover up cases that took place in Ireland.)
--He also claimed that only 10% of accusations against priests are proven.
KLIK

7) Cardinal Tarsicio Bertone, Italy
--He does not believe that a bishop should be required to report a priest who has been accused of sex abuse, saying “if a priest cannot confide in his bishop for fear of being denounced it would mean there is no more liberty of conscience.”
--He blames the child sex abuse epidemic on the “homosexual infiltration” of the clergy.
KLIK

  8) Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Washington D.C.

--In 2010, he refused to take action about Fr. Walter Salisbury – a priest who had been convicted twice of abusing children – who was quietly sent to Maine and continued working there, without any warning whatsoever to parishioners and the public.
KLIK
-- In 2004, he refused to help warn West Virginia families about an abusive Pittsburgh priest (Fr. Jack Hoehl) who was practicing in that state as a counselor.
KLIK
--He refused, in two dioceses, to take the simple public safety step of posting the names of proven, admitted and credibly accused priests on his diocesan websites. (Some 30 US bishops have done this.)


9) Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Quebec, Canada*
--He gave a homily dedicated to clerical sex abuse, talking about the need to open pathways for victims to come forward, but reportedly refused to meet with victims.
http://deborahgyapong.blogspot.com/2012/02/cardinal-marc-ouellets-homily-on.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/world/europe/now-gathering-in-rome-a-conclave-of-fallible-cardinals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
--He claims that church’s abuse response should be a model for others.
KLIK
·--He was involved in the recent Cardinal O’Brien resignation, allegedly brokering the deal, which perpetuated the unhealthy practice of essentially letting wrongdoers determine their own punishment (instead of church supervisors clearly and publicly sanctioning those who commit or conceal misdeeds).
KLIK

10) Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Boston
--In 2008, a national church panel found that, for the second year in a row, O’Malley was violating the US bishops’ child sex abuse prevention policy. According to other church officials, O’Malley was refusing to train all kids in his archdiocese how to avoid or stop being victimized. O’Malley also failed to discipline a single individual on his staff for this violation.
KLIK
--In 2006, in a case with disturbing parallels to many earlier Boston pedophile priest cases, O’Malley moved very slowly in the case of a prominent Catholic hospital official who faces multiple allegations of sexually harassing employees.
KLIK
--Under O’Malley’s watch, the archdiocesan abuse policy was revised, eliminating a provision that required the immediate removal of accused priests, and severely limited survivors’ access to archdiocesan files about their cases. Also, under O’Malley’s leadership, the archdiocese “cleared” a very high percentage of accused priests (45%, whereas most diocese have a 10% clearance rate), and has also failed to rule on at least 15 cases.
KLIK
--O’Malley was one of the last US bishops to post the names of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics on his website, and when he did, he disingenuously left off roughly one third of the priests – those who worked for religious orders.
(For more info on O’Malley, feel free to contact Anne Barrett Doyle 781 439 5208, barrett.doyle@comcast.net) and Terry Mckiernan (508 479 9304, mckiernan1@comcast.net) of BishopAccountability.org)

 11) Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Argentina
--Sandri is closely tied to the controversial Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was a staunch and disingenuous supporter of Fr. Marcial Maciel.
--In 2004, at a basilica in Rome, Sandri also read a letter publicly supporting Maciel and spoke of his allegedly good works.
KLIK
--Sandri remains a consummate Vatican insider. He's spent roughly 40 years there.
KLIK


12) Cardinal Peter Turkson, Ghana*
--He recently claimed that there were few child molesting clerics in Africa because they didn’t tolerate gay people there.
KLIK

(Note: Asterisk denotes member of the Roman Curia)

Bevestiging

Met dank aan Observatrix

Catholic bloggers aim to purge dissenters
24-10-2010
Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it's not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough.
Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church.
- In the Archdiocese of Boston, parishioners are dissecting the work of a top adviser to the cardinal for any hint of Marxist influence.
- Bloggers are combing through campaign finance records to expose staff of Catholic agencies who donate to politicians who support abortion rights.
- RealCatholicTV.com, working from studios in suburban Detroit, is hunting for "traitorous" nuns, priests or bishops throughout the American church.
"We're no more engaged in a witch hunt than a doctor excising a cancer is engaged in a witch hunt," said Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com and St. Michael's Media. "We're just shining a spotlight on people who are Catholics who do not live the faith."
John Allen, Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, has dubbed this trend "Taliban Catholicism." But he says it's not a strictly conservative phenomenon - liberals can fit the mindset, too, Allen says. Some left-leaning Catholics are outraged by any exercise of church authority.
Yet on the Internet and in the church, conservatives are having the bigger impact.
Among Voris' many media ventures is the CIA - the Catholic Investigative Agency - a program from RealCatholicTV to "bring to light the dark deeds of evil Catholics-in-name-only, who are hijacking the Church for their own ends, not the ends of Christ."
In an episode called "Catholic Tea Party," Voris said: "Catholics need to be aware .

and studied and knowledgeable enough about the faith to recognize a heretical nun or a traitorous priest or bishop when they see one - not so they can vote them out of office, but so they can pray for them, one, and alert as many other Catholics as possible to their treachery, two."
The blog "Bryan Hehir Exposed" is aimed at a top adviser to Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, who is the former head of national Catholic Charities and a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Among the bloggers' claims is that Hehir is a Marxist sympathizer who undermines Catholic teaching on abortion and marriage Hehir, who has advised church leaders for four decades, hasn't responded to any accusations and neither has O'Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan friar known for his humility.
However, O'Malley said in April on his own blog that Hehir "inspires us with his compassion, vision and fidelity to the work of the Church."
In August, O'Malley blocked access from archdiocesan headquarters to one of the critical blogs, the anonymously penned Boston Catholic Insider.
"The lack of civility is very disturbing," said Terrence C. Donilon, the archdiocesan spokesman.
The work of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is another frequent target.
Activists and bloggers, including Bellarmine Veritas Ministry of Texas, have been investigating the bishops' Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a national grantmaking program created in the 1970s to support community organizing and economic development.
The activists concluded that some of the grantees back same-sex marriage, artificial contraception or abortion rights.
As part of the push, activists accused the director of the bishops' national social justice office of serving on the board of a nonprofit while it advocated for gay marriage and abortion.
The claims against him were shown to be unfounded.
Still, the bloggers had an impact.
The bishop who oversees the anti-poverty grants said that a few, but not all, of the accused grantees had indeed taken positions contrary to church teaching and had been defunded.
Since the controversy erupted, 10 of the 195 U.S. dioceses have suspended or dropped annual parish collections for the program, and the bishops are reviewing their grant policies.
Thomas Peters, who runs the popular "AmericanPapist" blog, said fellow orthodox Catholics have embraced the Web because they feel they finally have a platform that can compete with well-established liberal Catholic publications, such as the National Catholic Reporter.
(Some conservative bloggers call the paper "the National Catholic Destroyer.")

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Sire, wie is toch die man die elke zondag

He came to Boston from Spain 15 years ago on a Roman Catholic lay mission, a deeply devout father of seven who forged his faith within a controversial religious movement born of the slums of Madrid.

Now Antonio Enrique is editor of The Pilot, the newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese, and a target of criticism for articles that have opened old wounds for a church trying to move past a decade of turbulence.

He published a column two weeks ago suggesting that homosexuality is caused by the devil. The uproar had barely faded when, a week later, The Pilot enraged priest abuse victims with a flattering birthday ode to Cardinal Bernard F. Law, the former Boston archbishop and the public face of the scandal.

For the past 10 years, Enrique, a confidant of Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, has steered The Pilot along the conservative edge of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, in line with his background in the Neocatechumenal Way, a relatively new religious community far more conservative than many American Catholics. Some bishops have embraced the Neocats, as they are often called; other bishops have sought to ban them.

“Many of the opinions voiced [in The Pilot] seem to be pre-Vatican II,’’ said Boston College historian and author, Thomas O’Connor, a regular reader, referring to a more rigid era of the church, before changes made in the 1960s.

Enrique declined to be interviewed and has not answered questions about the paper’s recent controversies.

For his religious mission in the United States, Enrique, now 48, had to quit his job in Spain where he worked in marketing and technology for a General Electric company. He came to Boston in 1996 to fulfill a call from Cardinal Law for mission families to help bring Spanish-speaking immigrants into the local Catholic Church.

Enrique and his wife, Reyes, arrived during a bleak New England winter, with no salary and no job, Enrique said on an archdiocese-sponsored radio broadcast in August.

“We came,’’ he told the radio audience, “in the hands of God.’’

Though he had not worked in journalism, according to the archdiocese, Enrique became an editor at La Vida Catolica, a Spanish-language Catholic publication; Law made him editor of The Pilot in 2001. O’Malley retained him when he became archbishop in 2003.

The archdiocese prints about 23,000 copies of The Pilot, distributed to subscribers and through the parishes. Founded in 1829, The Pilot says it is America’s oldest Catholic paper.

Some priests are open about their irritation toward The Pilot’s unwillingness to represent a wider range of Catholic opinions.

“The Pilot doesn’t help to build community when it causes this much of a division or crisis,’’ said the Rev. Robert Bowers, who works at The Paulist Center in Boston.

The Paulist Center refused to distribute the Oct. 28 edition of The Pilot because of the antigay column, written by Daniel Avila, who was at the time a policy adviser to US Conference of Catholic Bishops. He has since resigned.

The notion that the devil turns people gay is not the position of the Catholic Church, and under a loud backlash the paper apologized for “having failed to recognize the theological error’’ before publication.

Gay Catholics, in response, called for Enrique’s resignation, citing what they call a pattern of hostility. In June 2010, The Pilot offended gay Catholics by publishing a commentary that sought to link gay relationships to pornography, as part of their argument for banning the children of gay parents from Catholic schools.

“Because of the pastoral harm [Enrique] has done, we don’t think he should continue as editor,’’ said Marianne Duddy-Burke, director of DignityUSA, an advocacy group for gay Catholics.

Advocates for child victims were equally aghast over the paper’s lengthy Cardinal Law profile of Nov. 4, which mentioned Law’s role in the abuse scandal in two paragraphs near the bottom, before ending with “Happy Birthday, Your Eminence.’’

“What they ought to publish is an entire issue on the abusers Law sheltered during his administration,’’ fumed Anne Barrett Doyle, a director of the group BishopAccountability.org, which documents cases of clergy sexual abuse.

Despite the criticism, O’Malley offered Enrique an unqualified vote of confidence this week. “He has done an extraordinary job of running the newspaper,’’ the cardinal said Thursday in a statement. O’Malley praised Enrique’s professionalism and credited him with improving the paper’s balance sheet. “I am grateful for his leadership, advice and friendship,’’ said O’Malley, who is very close to Enrique and his wife. He personally baptized their 11th child.

Scot Landry, the archdiocese’s secretary for Catholic media, acknowledged in an interview that The Pilot hews to “more traditional or orthodox’’ Catholic viewpoints, as is its mission. The paper, he said, tries to be careful not to publish “dissent’’ in any way that might confuse readers on the official positions of the Catholic Church.

“Other Catholic newspapers or organizations not tied to a bishop may be more willing to publish dissenting views,’’ he said. “The Pilot is a thoroughly Catholic paper.’’

Opposing viewpoints are often published as letters to the editor, he said.

Tom Shields, a founder of La Vida, hired Enrique at the organization in the late 1990s, and they have been friends ever since. He said Enrique and the writers at The Pilot “are not mean-spirited in any way.’’

“They try to be Christlike in their writings and adhere to Catholic teachings,’’ while often defending the church from those who disagree with its moral message, Shields said.

As a follower of the Neocatechumenal Way, Enrique is part of a community that has earned a reputation for its energetic defense of Catholic doctrine, especially “refuting challenges to controversial Catholic moral teachings,’’ such as opposition to gay relationships, contraception and abortion, said Richard Gaillardetz, a Boston College theology professor. Followers of the group are known to criticize “pastors, bishops, and theologians who fail to meet their rigid standards of orthodoxy,’’ he said.

The Neocatechumenal Way dates back to Madrid around 1963, when Kiko Arguello, an accomplished painter, wandered into poor neighborhoods and started to evangelize. The movement has spread worldwide, often through small communities of several dozen people within parishes.

The Vatican considers the Neocats to be one of the new church movements - along with better-known groups such as Opus Dei - that are valuable for spreading and intensifying the Catholic faith, Gaillardetz said by e-mail.

Some bishops have found the Way disruptive; five bishops in Japan tried to suspend them, though Rome would not allow it.

Enrique told Catholic radio listeners in August that “one thing that happens in the Way is once you start realizing the love of God, you realize that you are not called to be the only architect of your life, that God has a plan for you.’’

In his family’s case, he said, the plan was to offer themselves as missionaries.

They offered for four years but were not chosen. “Eventually we purchased a house,’’ he said.

“We just decided this was not happening, [so] let’s move on with our lives. Right then and there we were called to this retreat, and by lottery we were sent to come to Boston.

“You learn with lots of mistakes in the process, of course,’’ Enrique explained on the radio. “But you learn that in the mission you let God live your life.’’

Adviser resigns following column linking same-sex attraction with devil

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A policy adviser to the U.S. bishops has resigned following a controversy over an opinion piece he wrote suggesting that same-sex attraction could be the work of the devil. Daniel Avila, policy adviser for marriage and family to the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage since June 20, offered his resignation Nov. 4 and it was accepted, effective immediately. Avila's opinion piece was published in the Oct. 28 edition of The Pilot, Boston's archdiocesan newspaper. It also was posted online before being removed Nov. 2 and replaced with an apology by Avila who previously worked as associate director for policy and research at the Massachusetts Catholic Conference in Boston. Terrence Donilon, spokesman for the Boston Archdiocese, told Catholic News Service the column was pulled because Avila "retracted it and apologized and because it simply should not have been printed/published in The Pilot." "It is not the position of the archdiocese or the church and is simply wrong," he said in a Nov. 3 email. Avila has written several columns for The Pilot during the past year and has been a contributor to the newspaper for at least seven years, according to Donilon. The most recent column, which generated reaction in the blogosphere was titled: "Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction." In the column, Avila attempted to answer the question about what causes same-sex attraction. He pointed to possible explanations such as "random imbalances in maternal hormone levels" which he said could have "disruptive prenatal effects on fetal development." But he said Catholics need to look for spiritual answers to this question. And as he sees it, "the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God," he said. "Applying this aspect of Catholic belief to interpret the scientific data makes more sense because it does not place God in the awkward position of blessing two mutually incompatible realities -- sexual difference and same-sex attraction."

In Avila's retraction and apology statement he said his column did not represent the position of the USCCB and was not authorized for publication. "The teaching of sacred Scripture and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church make it clear that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God and have inviolable dignity. Likewise, the church proclaims the sanctity of marriage as the permanent, faithful, fruitful union of one man and one woman."

He continued: "The church opposes, as I do too, all unjust discrimination and the violence against persons that unjust discrimination inspires. I deeply apologize for the hurt and confusion that this column has caused."

The Pilot also issued an apology on its website for "for having failed to recognize the theological error in the column before publication."

Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement: "While the general population has debated whether it's nurture or nature that leads to a homosexual inclination, the church has not posed any theory in that regard."

Most Reverend Gerald M. Barbarito: “For the good of all, I believe that it deserves special attention. I thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.”

Irish Times 

Jan 27, 2016

Patsy McGarry

Irish priest in conflict with church authorities over child abuse-related case in Florida

An Irish priest who has been serving in Florida since 2000 claims he has been ostracised by the church for reporting abuse-related activities of a fellow priest to local police.

An Irish priest who has been serving in Florida since 2000 claims he has been ostracised by the church for reporting abuse-related activities of a fellow priest to local police.

Fr Jose Palimatton was arrested and charged with possession of pornography and distributing it to a minor. He later pleaded guilty in court, served a sentence, and has been deported to his native India.

Fr John Gallagher (48) from Strabane, Co Tyrone, has since initiated canon law proceedings against Bishop Gerald Barbarito of the Diocese of Palm Beach at the Vatican.

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He has also spoken about the case with Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston,
chairman of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Fr Gallagher was critical of Cardinal O’Malley’s handling of the case, saying the commission should discuss the matter but had failed to do so.

That has been confirmed to The Irish Times by commission member Marie Collins, who said the Florida case had not been discussed, and the

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commission did not discuss individual cases. It meets in Rome next week.

Papal nuncio

Fr Gallagher said contact with the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and Ireland Archbishop Charles Brown had also been unsatisfactory.

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papal nuncio to

In December 2014, Fr Gallagher discovered that Fr Palimatton had shown pornography to a teenage boy. He called in a police detective he knew and together they interviewed the priest, who made many admissions.

When he contacted the diocese about the case, “I was told ‘we are used to this.We normally put people like this on an airplane’,” Fr Gallagher told The Irish Times.

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Bishop Barbarito called him a few days later and said he did not want to know the details, he added.

Since then, Fr Gallagher said he had been demoted and that the diocese removed his possessions from a house where he lived and changed the locks. He said he did not know whether church and civil authorities in India had been told about Fr Palimatton’s history.

In a statement, the Diocese of Palm Beach described reports about Fr Gallagher’s allegations as “a completely inaccurate representation of the facts”.

Bishop Barbarito, who succeeded Cardinal O’Malley as Bishop of Palm Beach in 2003, is from Brooklyn.

Previously, as Bishop of Ogdensburg diocese in New York State, he pledged to remove from ministry any priest found to have abused a child but said he saw no need to publicly name accused priests.

5-2-2016

Irish priest praised in US police letter to the Vatican

Fr John Gallagher’s evidence led to abusive priest’s conviction

An Irish Catholic priest has been singled out for praise in a letter sent to theVatican by US police officers who investigated a clerical child abuse case, while criticising the diocese in which the priest served.

Last week, Fr John Gallagher (48), from Strabane, Co Tyrone, who has been ministering in Florida since 2000, claimed he has been ostracised by church authorities there for reporting the conduct of another priest in January 2015.

He said he was subsequently demoted.

On April 30th, Fr Gallagher said he was told by Palm Beach diocesan authorities that he was being transferred to another parish. The transfer was not negotiable.

The accused Franciscan priest, Fr Jose Palimattom, was arrested and charged with possession of pornography and distributing it to a minor.

He pleaded guilty in court, served a sentence, and has been deported to his native India.

In an unsolicited letter about the case last May to her superior, detective Debi Phillips of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office praised the Irish priest.

“Having dealt with the Catholic Church in another criminal investigation I fully expected church administrators to be unco-operative and dismissive of the allegations,” she wrote. “Much to my surprise I was wrong.”

Fr Gallagher and his staff provided “timely evidence” that led to conviction of Fr Palimattom.

“I truly believe that if it wasn’t for the co-operation I received from [him], other children would have been victimised,” the detective wrote.

In a July 20th letter to Cardinal Sean O’Malley, also seen by The Irish Times, Ms Phillips’s superior, chief deputy Michael Gauger, said he “felt compelled to write” on behalf of Fr Gallagher.

cooperated as fully as we could in the investigation, 
Monseigneur.

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